Podcast Episode 4 - Announcing Version One for Everyone

I'm announcing today a new service that is going to be provided by Ideal Project Group, and I'm calling it Version One for Everyone - which I'll also refer to as v1.4e1. I'm really excited about it. So much so that in addition to announcing it on this blog, I've also put up a special podcast episode where I discuss the reasoning behind providing this service in more detail. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes, or simply listen to the episode at the bottom of this post.

As regular readers of this blog know, Ideal Project Group has, until now, focused almost exclusively on providing project management services for a variety of organizations. In these engagements, we generally work inside a company to manage important projects, work with their people, coordinate with vendors and business partners, and drive a project to completion. We will still be doing this, and it is still a vital component of our business.

During the course of running our core business though, we've learned a tremendous amount about the web, technology, design and a host of other things. Most importantly, we've learned a lot about some great tools that can allow anyone to quickly and easily deploy amazing web solutions. Of course, you have to know about these tools, learn how to use them, and then implement them to launch your business, or service.

After listening to some very compelling reasons as to why businesses should spend time focusing on their by-products (another 37Signals inspiration/reminder), and recognizing that various friends and family members have asked me to build websites for them, I realized that I've been sitting on everything I needed to provide another service. I've gathered a ton of knowledge, and have obtained a specific skill-set that I could use to help other people quickly launch websites, blogs, podcasts, social networks, and a variety of other web/technology related things such as online payment solutions, web forms, and other things of that nature.

It took me a little while to get comfortable with this idea. I've worked within technology departments for so long as a project manager that my perception of reality had become a bit skewed. First, when you're an IT project manager, the default position is that the developers, data base administrators, and others are the resident experts in their field. As a PM, you're an expert - but in something else than the people actually creating a product. The other thing that happens when working within technology departments for a while is you begin to assume that everyone knows how to do what you're able to do. After all, I'm not a developer - I help developers. So if this is true, then everyone knows how to build a website with WordPress, publish a podcast, or integrate a simple e-commerce solution with PayPal right?

Wrong.

The truth is there's a huge percentage of the population that doesn't know a thing about some of the tools that are available to build websites. And, it's also true that I've become an expert of sorts on the web. Do I still have a lot to learn? Absolutely. But that should always be the case should it not?

The other truth is that when someone goes to a web design firm to have a website made, they often get a proposal for something that's going to cost $10,000 or more. For a lot of businesses, this cost is worth it. For others though, it's not. And if you're just getting started, your website should absolutely not be one of your biggest expenses.

The alternative is to learn how to make a nice looking site with Blogger or Wordpress or another similar solution. For some people this is great; it's exactly what I did for my business. But here's the other truth that people in technology forget sometimes: Not everyone wants to learn how to do this or spend time doing it.

A lot of times, surgeons and eye doctors don't want to learn HTML. Chefs often don't want to learn how to find, download and install Blogger templates. An outdoors outfitter may not want to spend time integrating an online reservation and payment solution.

It seems to me that there's a need for great web solutions, that can be implemented quickly with tools that already exist by someone that knows how to use them. If a developer needs to be brought in to hook things together, or customize a few things then that's great. But building everything from scratch is not the solution most people need.

So this is the new service we're going to provide. The aim is that for a really reasonable price we should be able to create and deploy a great web solution for most small businesses. We're beginning by outlining a few things we can create such as websites, blogs and podcasts, along with basic web services like setting up email addresses, domain handling and that kind of think. It may even grow into a sort of outsourced tech department kind of thing. I don't know where it'll go exactly, but this is where we're going to start.

You can get more details on this new service at http://v1.4e1.idealprojectgroup.com.

If you or someone you know wants to get a great website, podcast, or something else on the web up and running quickly, I hope you'll consider sending them our way.

Complicated software allows people to control information

Anyone that's worked with me knows I'm sort of fanatical about Basecamp, the project collaboration software by 37 Signals. There are a host of reasons as to why I like their software for managing my projects so much, but the clarity that it can provide on a project is probably it's biggest asset in my eyes.

This has had me thinking lately though about why so many organizations choose software that's more complicated, complex, and often difficult to use. I think a lot of it comes down to the paradox that difficult software can also provide a lot of comfort. Why? Because the people that know how to use the complicated software get to control the information flow.

Complete clarity on the other hand can often times be uncomfortable. As I like to do, let's take a sort of extreme example. Everyone knows the health care debate continues to rage on. Imagine for a moment how differently things would turn out if every conversation, every deal, and every compromise - with everyone involved - had to take place inside a software like Basecamp. I believe there would be an entirely different conversation, and an entirely different result. Why? No information control.

Now I don't think in most organizations there's any malice intent, it's just that when things feel comfortable, there's little incentive to change.

The clarity that easy to use software can provide goes up, down, left and right through an entire organization. No one is immune to the impact it can have. Here again, this can cause discomfort. Take an example of a Marketing VP deciding on a new logo. After all the re-designs, all the back and forth, all the tweaking, if the only thing left to do is make a decision, and there's a task for someone to "decide on new logo", that might be really uncomfortable. It shines a light on the fact that there's not really any fancy process going on, someone just needs to make a decision.

Similar examples could be drawn for every area of a company. If you're heading up the technology department, it's really easy to hide poor performance behind a curtain of tech speak and complicated software that only your group knows how to use. If your sales people, designers, or CEO could easily look at an action inside any project and chime in with their opinion, ask a question, or see that the same task is assigned to the same person and still isn't done, how would you react?

If you're managing a project and every time a milestone was missed everyone in your company knew about it, how would that make you feel? If you could easily see every important decision that was waiting to be made, how would your CEO feel?

What this all comes down to is that even though the outside world has become ever more transparent, where everyone is a reporter, everyone is an expert, and everyone can review your product, many companies are slow to adopt tools that bring this level of transparency inside their own organizations. That's too bad because this is exactly what most companies need to be doing.

Ultimately, any organization would benefit by having complete clarity on their projects in the same way that we would all benefit if the health care debate was happening inside Basecamp.

Don't spend time quantifying the obvious

It's tempting to think that quantifying everything will help you make a decision. Sometimes, this is true. The answer to a question may not be readily available, and using numbers may provide a level of clarity that will allow you to make the proper decision.

Other times though, you already know the answer. All you're doing when you spend time quantifying something that's obvious is delaying the difficult task of making a decision, wasting time, and making yourself feel better.

You're not actually doing anything to help you reach your goal though, and in fact you're spending time and energy where you don't need to.

In these instances, not only is quantifying the problem unhelpful, it's harmful and wasteful.

"But wait!" you might say, "I need to communicate to someone else why a certain decision has to be made, and the only way to do that is with numbers!" After all, it's true that there is a financial component to a lot of decisions.

This doesn't mean you have to quantify everything though. I would even argue that someone who can quickly and clearly articulate why one decision is better than another while quantifying less, is actually providing more value.

Let's take an example you may be familiar with.

Your family wants to take a summer vacation. Actually, you want to take three. Do you really need to outline your income, taxes, food expenses, clothing expenses, daycare costs, remaining vacation time, and then break out the cost of each trip to realize you can only afford one vacation?

No. You already know you can only afford one vacation. Spend time quantifying whether you can take three vacations and all you're doing is delaying the decision of which one you're going take. It feels good because you haven't closed the door on two of the possible vacations yet.

Wasteful.

This is a small example, but I think similar things happen in businesses all the time.

Do you really need to quantify everything related to bringing another designer or developer onto a project? Probably not. Sure, you need to know how much that's going to cost you, but this is an entirely different quantification than determining the expected return of the value of other projects they may or may not be working on over the course of a year.

Do you need to spend a tremendous amount of time quantifying why you should choose one vendor over another when one is clearly better? Probably not.

Do you need a complex study to tell you that the $100,000 ad in a magazine or newspaper could be better spent? No. You already know this.

The next time you find yourself spending a bunch of time quantifying things, ask yourself, is this exercise helping you come to a decision that isn't clear?

Or are you quantifying the obvious so you don't have to make a decision?

Thoughts on the iPad

If you're interested in my take on the iPad, along with what it means to the Android world, check out this post on the Duarlander blog.

Short term planning does not mean short term thinking

One of the great things about the world of software development right now is the growing acceptance that you know more about something after you've started working on it, and understanding that you know the very least at the beginning of your project. This means less time spent up front trying to figure out every little detail, getting to work, and iterating as required.

This is a great approach and I've seen first hand how effective developing in this manner can be. The first version of GoFind! was designed and built in just under 6 weeks. We then released small updates about once a week for another four weeks. I kid around with my brother who works at a large insurance company that we probably built a product in less time than it would take them just to get a job requisition approved.

There's a significant distinction though that I don't feel like I hear many people talking about. Just because you aren't planning for everything far out in the future, doesn't mean you shouldn't be thinking about the future.

You still want to be aware of the direction you're heading.

Maybe you're a small company that wants to stay true to your core values, remain quick, and always be flexible. Because of this the actions you take today are done with the understanding of how you want your company to be in the future. You may not be planning for two years from now, but you're aware of how the decisions you make today will affect your overall goals. To me, this is long term thinking.

Let's take another, but this time more fun, example. You're leaving Chicago on a road trip out to Yosemite National Park in California. Instead of planning every detail of your trip though, you just decide that you'll stay at a hotel when it makes sense, camp where you can, eat when you feel like it, do some sightseeing along the way, and you're just going to take it easy. Awesome.

Here's the thing; this whole time you're still aware that you want to actually get to Yosemite. If during the course of your leisurely approach to getting there you find yourself heading Northeast for a couple hundred miles, it's probably a good idea to ask yourself if you still want to make it to California. Regardless of your answer, as long as you asked yourself that question, you just engaged in long term thinking.

In your world, this might mean understanding that separate systems are going to eventually need to communicate with each other in order to be effective. It might mean choosing WordPress for your client over building a website from scratch because you know they're going to want to maintain everything themselves. In another situation it might mean hiring a developer based not only on their proficiency in one programming language, but also the likelihood that they'll be able to learn another one.

As we spend less time planning for tomorrow, I believe we need to spend a little more time understanding how our actions today are going to affect us in the future.

If you're planning less, that's great. Just start thinking more as well.